Activity 1 – compiling, refining and expanding the three annotated bibliographies you have written so far as a comprehensive annotated biblography from your work in this course.You should also publish it somewhere and provide the address in the discussion forum.

Activity 2 – compiling, refining and expanding your learning objects into a learning module, publishing it somewhere and provide the address in the discussion forum.

Paulsen, Morten et Dalsgaard, Christian, June, 2009, “Transparency in Cooperative Online Education”, in International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, Volume 10, Number , available at http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/671 , accessed in 2010-06-06

In this article, these two authors try to answer a main question. In their own words:

“The purpose of this article is to discuss the following question: What is the potential of social networking within cooperative online education?”

In order to answer this question, the authors start by studying the relationship between networking and cooperative education.
The authors argue that transparency is important to online education, as it enables students to work cooperatively, by being visible to each other. The use of the network social tools is presented as the tools of transparency and, therefore, the tools to create a truthful learning collaboration community. The authors also approach the issue of privacy rights and explain how these two notions are handled at NKI.

However, although we should respect student’s privacy, the transparency enabled by social networking is vital to a collaborative learning experience. “Social networking sites are not the new learning management systems. From the perspective of the theory of cooperative freedom, however, the special kind of communication and interaction afforded by social networking sites is interesting and has pedagogical potential. From this point of view, social networking should be considered as a supplement to other tools. The potential of social networking lies within transparency and the ability to create awareness among students.”

On his blog “Connectivism – networked and social learning”, Siemens wrote an interesting article about becoming teachers with transparency. This aspect of being a transparent learner (becoming a teacher) is very interesting and I totally relate to it concerning my experience at UAb, since my colleagues work has contributed to my learning as much as the instructional course design.

As Siemens puts it: “Let me explain. When someone decides to share their thoughts and ideas in a transparent manner, they become a teacher to those who are observing. Social technology – such as Twitter, blogs, Facebook – opens the door to sharing the process of learning, not only the final product.”

This video from the University of New South Wales (Australia) is a look at how social web tools are being used in university classrooms.

This University started a networks’ literacy project to develop the use and understanding of social network tools and its consequences in learning. The researchers point out some of the benefits of making students work visible to the community and outside the community, to the world.

This project also gives attention to Student’s privacy, allowing students to choose when (or if) to post their work outside the UNSW community.

Online Teaching Techniques

“This article presents experiences with teaching techniques that were found in the literature and that were recommended by some of the 150 online teachers that were interviewed about their experiences with teaching techniques.”

In this article, Morten Paulsen begins by giving an overview of the teaching techniques discussed in CMC literature and presents a Framework for online teaching techniques, based on the type of interaction used (one – online; one to one; one to many; many to many). It is a very interesting article which congregates the mainly used teaching techniques in online learning environments, based on “The Online Report on Pedagogical Techniques for Computer-Mediated Communication” from 1995.

In this site we can find practical tips or Good Practices for teaching in online environments. It has from the base strategies for teaching in online environments; a Course Redesign Guide by Boettcher & Conrad (1999); an overview of Online Teaching Techniques for Computer-Mediated Communications; tips for building learning communities and other recourses:

Another practical site for e-teachers, with useful information on online techniques and activities. The Gallery of strategies section provides samples of online activities, grouped in two levels. We can access samples and view an explanation of each activity.

In this article Morten Paulsen presents his theory of cooperative freedom, explaining the meaning of both components “cooperation” and “freedom” in learning. This is a very clear article that gives us an understanding of the alternative to an individual learning vs a group collaborative learning – cooperative learning. The idea is to respect individual freedom, inspired by the andragogy theory by Knowles in a cooperative learning network environment.

Published on YouTube on June 12, 2008 by Professor Morten Flate Paulsen. He explains the theory of Cooperative Freedom in online education, distinguishes the three online learning theories and relates the solution enabling online cooperative learning to the web 2.0 and social networks.

In this interview we can read more in detail about the differences on the three online learning theories and the importance of transparency and web 2.0 to building cooperative learning environments which allow student’s freedom, but grant them the opportunity to learn with and from others.

Finally, I chose this article about the role of social network and transparency in enabling cooperative learning.

The authors start by explaining the concepts of cooperative learning and transparency and defend that cooperative learning requires transparency. We can also find a description of the tools, assessment and assignments used in cooperative learning.

We were asked to construct an annotated bibliography on cooperative freedom.

I was fortunate enough to have attended a semminar in Futurália last Sunday with a great presentation by Morten Paulsen on this issue, so, that presentation will be my first reference in this AB.

My comments:

We can’t really build an annotated bibliography on Cooperative Freedom without including Morten Paulsen’s work. In this presentation, Professor Paulsen talked about his theory of cooperative freedom, integrated in his (long) experience in a more open e-learning model and comparing it with a more recent experience with a group oriented collaborative model. A very interesting aspect was the introduction of “freedom of transparency”.